


Echoes of the Wolf

by russian_blue



Category: Le Pacte des Loups | Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 05:43:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/russian_blue/pseuds/russian_blue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is the last echo of a voice now silenced.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echoes of the Wolf

**Author's Note:**

  * For [haipollai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/haipollai/gifts).



He didn’t know he was being watched until he looked up and saw the forest man staring at him.

By then it was too late. Blood dripped from his knife, onto the limp body of the white man at his feet. Their war-leader was not yet dead; faint whistling sounds still came from his slashed throat, as he tried to suck air in through a hole that should not be there. But the sounds grew fainter and further apart, and all the while the forest man stood, staring at him.

It meant death for Mani. But he had known that before he cut the white man’s throat, and he accepted it. Everyone else was dead. He looked forward to joining them.

One last gasp, and then the sounds stopped. Mani bent, deliberately, not taking his eyes off the forest man, and knocked the war-leader’s hat away, then took a firm grip in his hair. The forest man watched, unblinking, as Mani sawed his blade along the top of the skull, until the scalp tore free.

Then the forest man nodded. One quick, sharp motion, acknowledging Mani—it almost looked respectful. One warrior to another.

He did not shout an alarm.

Turning away took great effort. Mani expected the shattering crack of a gun, pain blossoming between his shoulders. But there was nothing. Only the quiet rustle of the forest as he vanished among its branches.  


* * *

  
The forest man’s name was Gregoire de Fronsac, but that came long after Mani first saw him.

He was one of the French soldiers, come into Mani’s land from across the sea. But unlike his companions, he paid attention to the world around him, looking for more than just enemies. He knew how to listen, how to see. He gathered leaves and flowers, hunted animals as if trying to collect one of each kind. That was why Mani called him the forest man, and why the epithet stayed for a long time even after he learned Fronsac’s name: he saw an echo of himself in the other man, underneath the differences that separated them.

Not that it mattered, when he became the forest man’s prisoner. Echoes meant nothing, once the sounds that made them were gone. Weeks and months of sickness, of watching his kinsmen succumb to fevers and infection, and all the while the white men stood by; then, when his people were too weak to fight back, the attack came at last. It was not battle. It was slaughter.

Leaving only Mani, the last echo of a voice now silenced.

Mani, wounded in body and spirit. The forest man kept him alive, stitching together his skin, bringing him water when fever burned him dry. The man spoke broken bits of Mani’s language, which was both comfort and a source of pain; Mani hated the man for trying, for knowing anything about the world his people had just destroyed. But at the same time he clung to the sounds, to the tiny familiar islands that remained when the torrent had swept everything else away.

“I teach you,” Fronsac said in his broken words, once Mani’s fever had receded. His eyes held Mani’s, communicating what his command of the language could not. “For _mon capitaine_. Our words.”

That was why he was still alive. To learn more of the white man’s tongue, and serve them in their butchery.

He tried to kill Fronsac not long after that. But it was too soon; his wounds still crippled him, and for all his studying of leaves, the forest man was a warrior as well. Fronsac subdued him almost gently, causing as little pain as he could. As he returned the prisoner to his pallet, Mani heard him whispering in French, words rarely directed at his people: “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry” meant nothing. What came later meant more.

Mani grew in strength, his body recovering even while his spirit still bled. And then, when he was strong enough, he took a knife and escaped from the log cabin, going in search of the white men’s leader.

Words were just echoes. The real speaking came when the forest man stayed silent, and let Mani walk away.  


* * *

  
He could have run farther. But Mani had spent most of his strength wrestling with the war-leader, and now that the man lay dead, he didn’t know what to do with himself.

There were other Haudenosaunee. He could go join them. Once he finished healing, he would be as good a warrior as any, and he knew many things: not only the spirits of his people, but the ways of the white men. Pieces of their language. That would be of value to the others.

But he stopped at the edge of a stream, sitting on a flat-topped rock, and stared at the water instead.

He heard the forest man coming, but only because Fronsac wanted him to. Mani knew the Frenchman could be silent enough when it served his purpose. If he made noise, it meant he was alone, and had not come here to fight.

Mani stayed where he was, moving only to put one hand on his knife.

The forest man came into view, saw Mani sitting on the bank of the stream. He spread his hands; there was a gun slung over his shoulder, but he carried no weapon he could draw quickly. In Mani’s language, he said, “Thank you.”

The words stung. Which would sting more: to answer him in the same tongue, or in French? Mani chose the latter. “Why?”

“Because you did what I should have done.” Fronsac had switched to French, respecting Mani’s choice. “That man was the reason your people were sick. And he gave the order for us to kill the women and children. He was a _boucher_.”

Mani didn’t recognize that last word, but the way the forest-man spat the sounds made their meaning clear. As did the self-loathing fury in Fronsac’s eyes. He’d seen that expression there before, during his time in captivity; now he knew the cause. Sickness, given to them on purpose. No warrior should fight that way.

Had Fronsac tried to stop it? Or had he only learned honor after he saw what happened without it?

Whatever the answer, it made no difference to the past. It might, however, make a difference to the future.

“What now?” he asked, realizing only afterward that he’d spoken in his own language.

The forest man shook his head slowly. “I . . . not know. I hid body. You not named, if come with me.”

Mani worked his way through the broken words. Fronsac had not only let him go; he had concealed the entire thing. And if he came back, no one would chase him.

If he came back, the white men would use him.

He shook his head. “No.”

Fronsac nodded, as if he had expected that answer. “You go to your people?”

“My people are dead,” Mani said. There were other Haudenosaunee, but they weren’t his tribe. His mother and father and grandmother, his brothers and sisters, his cousins and the young woman who might have been his wife. All gone. Everything else was just an echo in the hollow space of his heart.

Better to live in silence.

“I keep them away,” Fronsac said, offering the words hesitantly. “Him dead . . . I am _capitaine_ now. No blankets with sickness. My _promesse_.”

It would not bring back Mani’s people, nor stop the war with the French. But Mani nodded anyway. “Thank you.”

The forest man extended his hand. Mani rose, but instead of taking it as the French did, he turned Fronsac’s palm upward and placed his own across it.

He had never tried this with a white man before. He did not know if they had totems. But gazing into Fronsac’s eyes, he listened with his heart, and heard an echo from the other man’s spirit.

The wolf lived in Gregoire de Fronsac as well.

Startled, Mani said, “I think we will meet again.”

“In peace, I hope,” Fronsac said, and Mani nodded. Between Haudenosaunee and the white men, no; but between the two of them, perhaps.

This time, turning away was easier. When Mani went into the forest, he knew that he did not go alone.

**Author's Note:**

> This was entirely inspired by your letter reminding me that "Gregoire saw [Mani] kill Gregoire's commanding officer and apparently didn't turn him in." With that as my starting point, I couldn't get this story to cover the part where they become actual friends and brothers; it would have trivialized Mani's loss too much. But I had an interesting time thinking through how and why they'd start down that path, from such a bad beginning. Hopefully this works for you as a possible explanation (and hopefully you'll forgive me for the total lack of kissing!).


End file.
